In geometry class, the girl to boy ratio is $8$ to $6$. If there are a total of $42$ students, how many girls are there?
A ratio of $8$ girls to $6$ boys means that a set of $14$ students will have $8$ girls and $6$ boys. A class of $42$ students has $3$ sets of $14$ students. Because we know that there are $8$ girls in each set of $14$ students, the class must have $3$ groups of $8$ girls each. There is a total of $24$ girls in geometry class.